random thoughts from moo yu

Announcing Ring Fling

So, I’m finally ready to unveil the game I’ve been working on for the last month. I probably should have announced it a long time ago, but I was stuck in a perpetual state of “one more day and it’ll be ready.” Anyway, it’s called Ring Fling and it’s a simple single-device multiplayer game. You fling rings to try to knock the jaggies into your opponents’ zones–pretty straight forward.

I wanted to talk a little bit at a high level about why I made this game and how I made it and all that. I’m sure I’ll go into some of the topics in more detail in later blog posts, but I thought I’d just throw whatever came to mind out there.

So let’s start with why I’m doing an iOS game. The main reason is that I haven’t released an iOS game before and I’m always trying to learn new things. I’ve done console games and I’ve done social games. I thought that doing a mobile game, specifically one with intuitive touch controls would be the best opportunity to learn more. I’ve always had this fear, verging on terror, that I’ll hit the point in my career where I’ve memorized how to do a set of things, but have stopped learning new things and have no choice but to sit and watch the next generation run past me.

So I decided I was going to make an iOS game but why this one? Actually, I didn’t decide on this one first. At the beginning of the year, I was working freelance 4 days a week and left 1 day for me to do my indie thing. I started working on an asynchronous turn-based strategy game. It started out every RTS-like. Well, it started out with lots of real time fun but not so much strategy. The more strategic it got, the more I felt like I was programming menus and not learning anything about touch-based game controls.

So, I thought of a game that I loved playing when I was a kid. It was called Crossfire and you shot little ball bearings to knock these plastic pucks into the opposing goal. So I spent a day trying to do a quick prototype of a 4 player version. After about 5 or 6 hours, it was infinitely more fun to play than the other game I had been working on. So, I kept going at it.

I’ve since become full time on Mind Candy’s mobile team so it’s just been an hour here and an hour there. I’ve probably put somewhere around 100 hours into putting it together, but that doesn’t include the time I spent building the engine with Luke on the train to and from Molecule many years ago. For the most part, I’ve made this game alone, but I’ve had lots of help. The sound design was done by a friend. I’ll ask if I’m allowed to name him. I’ve gotten loads of great feedback from friends, especially @MikeBithell, @Rovient, @luke_duke, and the @makielab crew.

I’m pretty happy with it. It definitely did what I wanted it to do, which was to get me acquainted with touch controls and learn more about game design in general. I wanted to make something simple enough that you could get into it in a matter of seconds, but with enough twists and turns along the way that you just might play long enough that you’d tell a friend about it.

So, all-in-all, it’s been a great experience so far. I’m really excited to announce it today and see if I can get anyone interested in talking to me about it. If you’re a human or an adorable animal who would like to chat to me about this game or anything else, get in touch at press@mugathur.com.